


Train Interlude

by eleanor_lavish, thepsychicclam



Series: Valiant Effort [23]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-18
Updated: 2009-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:47:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanor_lavish/pseuds/eleanor_lavish, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepsychicclam/pseuds/thepsychicclam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trains mean different things to everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Train Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Written by Clammy.

Elijah’s always loved trains. When he was a little boy, he used to sit on the back porch of his house with his grandfather, who whittled wood and rocked in the rickety rocking chair, and watched as the trains chugged by on their tracks. They carried livestock, freight, cars, tractors – anything imaginable. Sometimes he’d run beside them, tripping over rocks and uneven patches of grass, and wave to no one as the cars passed by quickly.

His parents bought him his first train set when he was five. Elijah set it up in his den, bits of track winding all around the room. Hannah would lie with him in the middle of the expansive circle, while they watched it go round and round while they lay on their bellies. Hannah wanted to be just like Elijah from the day she was born, so she loved trains too. But she didn’t understand them like Elijah did.

Trains took him on adventures and away from the cornfields he knew. They were exciting and big, bigger than just about anything. For Christmas he got a conductor’s hat and ran around the house tooting his imaginary train whistle and told Hannah that when he grew up he was going to work on his very own train, and she could always ride in the red caboose.

One day when Elijah was six, he left his train set in the den while he played outside with the neighborhood kids. He ran back into the house for a baseball and saw Zack and his best friend Mike kicking the train cars and tracks apart with their feet. Elijah ran in screaming, tears flowing down his little face, but they just laughed and kept kicking. Elijah jumped on Zack’s back and bit his shoulder, and Zack flung him across the room. They left Elijah alone in the room with his broken toy.

New York was full of trains, the most interesting of all the subway. Elijah loved to take the subway. There were so many people, so many interesting things to watch from his seat in the corner. He’d pull his headphones over his ears and watch. Then he’d take out his philosophy notes or a new song the band was working on and ride for hours.

He did his best thinking on the subway. After Dom started dating Miranda, Elijah spent a few days hiding as the train continuously roved around the city. Hiding was exactly what he wanted to do, not just for the day, but forever. He had been so close to gaining everything that he had wanted, but had it all jerked from under him. He should have known better, really. Someone like Dom falling in love with someone like Elijah? The idea was laughable. Elijah would never be anything but a fake, a geek boy trying to hang with the cool kids. No drum set, wrist cuff, or smudge of eyeliner could change that.

But it was his life, and why shouldn’t Dom love him? Hell, Dom did love him. Elijah knew that, but he just wasn’t good enough to keep him. And as he stared out of the dark subway windows, he further convinced himself how perfect Miranda and Dom were for each other. Elijah could never be as smart as Miranda, only passed his classes by the skin of his teeth. And he didn’t want to smart like her. He didn’t see where that useless knowledge would get you when you were trying to survive on a bartender’s salary and make it big in a rock band. But it was obviously important to Dom.

Elijah had tried to get over Dom. He’d fucked so many guys in the last week that he was beginning to think of himself as a whore, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t fuck Dom out of his brain, and more annoyingly, his heart. He loved Dom and would always love Dom, no matter what. But for now, he’d just stay on the train and let the familiar, sweet sounds of the wheels lull him into numbness.

*

Dom thinks that Americans got the whole train thing all wrong. Sure, they used trains to carry stuff from one place to the next, but you couldn’t take a train from New York to LA or Wichita like you can from London to Manchester or Leeds. But, he thinks, at least they got the subway right.

When he rides late at night to his various deals, he sees kids on the subway that remind him of himself when he was younger. There is one boy who is always on the same train car after nine pm. He wears ripped jeans, gloves with holes in them, and three shirts. His off-brand tennis shoes are smeared with oil and dirt and he carries a beat up army bag.

Dom watches him, thinks he knows him. The kids aren’t that different. Dom was one of them before he met Orlando. Haunted the subways until someone threw him off or it was late enough to go home. But Dom never wanted to go home, never wanted to walk into an empty house, his mum working three jobs just to keep a roof over their heads, brother going from one friend’s house to the next, dad at the pub getting pissed with money they didn’t have.

One day Dom saw a man get robbed on the subway. He was sixteen, and from his curled up position in the seat watched quietly as two street thugs robbed a wealthy man. He felt small prickles of guilt, but deep down he didn’t care. The thugs probably needed the money more than the rich man. They didn’t hurt the man, just kicked him a few times and made off with the cash.

Dom never told anyone about that.

Except Elijah, one night while drunk and helping him study for an exam on Kant. Elijah bit his lip as he listened, nodded with his wide, innocent eyes and didn’t say anything afterwards, just took Dom’s hand and squeezed it gently. They sat silently, fingers interlaced, Elijah’s head resting on Dom’s lap, lost in their own separate thoughts.

Dom feels for the kid he sees on the subway, wishes he could tell him to hang in there, find a good friend to watch his back, or take him under his wing to try and make things different than they were for him.

But he still wishes he could take a train from New York to LA.

*

Billy hates the New York subway. Every time he steps on it, it’s like stepping to his doom. He shifts uncomfortably on the hard, plastic seats in his snug grey suit and paisley tie. If someone had told him ten years ago he’d be wearing a paisley tie, he’d have punched them while laughing his arse off.

But now Billy rides the subway five times a week, sometimes six, uptown to his little cubicle in hell. He hates it, answering phones, calling people, doing paperwork. He doodles guitars and music notes on his papers while he listens to customers drone on the phone.

He’s always been the responsible one, even back after his parents died. He worked his fingers to the bone in a bookbinding shop so Margaret could study and go to college. She always was the smart one. Billy couldn’t do math or understand photosynthesis, but he had street smarts. He knew the way the world worked and knew he’d be better out in it unprotected than his dear sister.

Even now he’s the responsible one, the leader, one who keeps everyone together. He brought them all together and with one wrong move could tear everything apart. He knows they are all strong men, all have their unique troubles that gives them an edge and smarts that most people don’t have. But Billy is still the one who had seen the most, been through the most. Elijah is a kid, still naïve and pure, though he knows before long Elijah will lose all that. Dom is quick, but he makes bad decisions, doesn’t think things through before he does them. And Orlando…he was used to having it easy, so part of him thinks that things can’t get that bad. And Billy needs his optimism, because he doesn’t let himself have any.

Billy lost his optimism a long time ago. His grandmother’s money wasn’t enough for everything they needed. Margaret needed glasses and money for college that fall. He felt it was his responsibility to get it since he was the man of the house. He worked all the hours he could at the factory, but it just wasn’t enough. He needed something extra, something really quick and sure. And he knew exactly what to do.

There was a man who helped out kids when they needed cocaine fixes, bail money, or gambling debts paid off. No one was sure what he did, and they all knew it was better that way. There are some things better off not knowing, and a man who could shell out fifty thousand in one fell swoop was better off being thought of as lucky.

The man lived in an old loft on the south side of Glasgow. The bottom floor was a furniture shop and the upstairs was a few large rooms with boxes lining the walls. It was dark, the windows were dirty and covered in grime, and smelled like the five mangy dogs he kept around. Billy went to him one night, scared the entire way he was going to get killed or worse, and told the man, who smelled faintly of fish and whiskey, he needed money. Couple thousand, enough to get his sister into school and a good pair of glasses.

The man was generous, handed Billy five thousand pounds without a second thought. Billy pocketed it real quick and waited for the catch, what he’d have to do in return. A couple of the blokes he knew had to kill someone, a few others smuggled drugs, and one bloke beat up a guy in an alleyway before being caught by the police. Billy was ready for whatever it was, because his family needed the money that desperately.

Reaching across the uneven table, the man offered Billy a glass of whiskey. Billy sipped uncomfortably as the man studied him. He gripped the slippery glass in his hand as the man shifted, unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers. With shaking hands, Billy set the glass down on the table and got to his knees.

Billy met with him four other times, once in a club, a diner, the park, and the train station. Seemed the man’s favorite payment for young boys was sex. Billy just kept reminding himself he was doing it for his sister, and it was a small price to pay for giving her a future.

His sister became successful just like he always knew she would. She wasn’t a fuck up like her little brother. He’d rather be rotting in jail or in a coffin than on the train every morning, going to work for some corporate bastard. But just like when he was a kid, he doesn’t just have himself to take care of, but his family.

So every morning at six am, he grabs his onion bagel Orlando made for him the night before, leaves coffee brewing for Elijah when he wakes for class, and walks quietly past a sleeping Dom out of the apartment and to the train station.

*

Orlando views trains like he views cars and planes – they’re just a convenient way for moving from one place to the next. He does think it’s a pity how the whole railway system isn’t the same in America, but he doesn’t lose any sleep over it.

He generally walks everywhere he can anyway. Not much of a chance to exercise with the life he leads, so he walks to the grocer, the bar, work if he’s feeling extra energetic. He sometimes rides the subway, especially if he’s out with Elijah, but he doesn’t pay attention to things like Elijah does. Elijah watches the people, the wheels, the other trains as they pass by. Orlando just rides.

He once took a train trip when he was sixteen with a few of his friends, including his then girlfriend Kate. She was beautiful, blonde, athletic, funny, perfect, just how Orlando liked his women. The trip served as an excuse to sleep late, play poker with his friends, and shag his beautiful girl. They spent seven days traveling through Britain, occasionally getting off the train to sightsee or grab a meal at a local restaurant or pub.

By day six, Orlando had grown bored with his perfect girl, which was convenient since she had started shagging his mate, Brad, anyway. That night, in the dark porter’s closet in one of the vacant cars, Orlando found himself pushed against the wall, shirt sliding up his slender waist, deft hands exploring beneath his boxers. He’d never had someone touch him like that, with fingerprints that left fire on his skin and kisses that made his lips tingle with every soft brush. But he had never kissed a boy either. When Eric had pulled him into the closet, Orlando scoffed that he wasn’t gay, but with Eric’s lips around his cock, he realized he was wrong.

He never told his father, knew it’d be a sure fire way out of the will. Besides, he still liked women, just not as much as men. He could never deny the lure of a beautiful woman, soft curves and shy smiles, but they were only temporary fun. Now when Orlando rides the train with Billy, he thinks about the trip with Eric, wants to shag Billy right there with the undulating wheels as background music while they move together. Orlando made a vow to himself that if he ever ended up with Billy, they’d fly back to Canterbury and tell his father everything. Billy is the only one he’d risk that for. Only one he’d risk everything for.

But Orlando still just thinks a train is a train.

~Fin  



End file.
